Major journal under fire for omitting Pfizer’s failed flu data in seniors
Pfizer’s mRNA flu shot failed in the over-65s, but the New England Journal of Medicine never published the data — prompting calls for accountability.
This week, I reported that Pfizer’s mRNA flu shot offered almost no clinical benefit in adults aged 18–64 — and that the harms were more significant than the headlines suggested.
But that was not the full story.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) did not publish any data from the older adults in the same trial — the very population most at risk from influenza and the main reason these vaccines exist.
Instead, the over-65 results were quietly uploaded to ClinicalTrials.gov, where they sat buried on a government website, out of sight and far from the scrutiny that comes with publication in a leading medical journal.
When MIT professor Retsef Levi discovered the missing cohort while reviewing the trial documents, he was stunned — not only by what the data showed, but by what it means when a flagship journal selectively reports findings that may directly shape public health decisions.
What he told me calls into question not just this study, but the integrity of the system that allowed it to happen.
